Weird UPAC saga gets weirder

A puzzling political subplot reached a perplexing denouement Monday, as Quebecers went to the polls to hand the Coalition Avenir Québec a historic election victory.

Early in the day, Unité permanente anti-corruption boss Robert Lafrenière, who has engaged in open warfare with the province’s political establishment over the past year, announced his resignation. Hours later, Guy Ouellette, a Liberal MNA who was the target of a controversial probe by UPAC, won a fifth mandate by a landslide in his Laval riding of Chomedey.

For anyone keeping score in this clash of the titans, that signals a big loss for Lafrenière and a major gain for Ouellette.

But is this the end of a weird saga that got even weirder during the final sprint of the 2018 campaign?

Recall that Ouellette was arrested by UPAC last October in a sting operation, allegedly for leaking confidential information about its investigations into former Liberal premier Jean Charest and party financier Marc Bibeau to the media. Ouellette was never charged with a crime. The arrest of a sitting MNA and seizure of his cellphones, laptop and other documents sent shock waves through the Quebec political world and sparked concerns about respect for parliamentary privilege.

Last week, the CAQ claimed to have received leaked emails and documents from Ouellette in 2016 raising embarrassing doubts about certain Liberal political appointments. Ouellette claimed UPAC might have planted them and denied any knowledge of having sent them.

Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard was forced to defend the embattled MNA — and admit at the same time he hadn’t been able to reach Ouellette since the story broke. (Search warrants executed by UPAC and later made public said Ouellette had three cellphones with different providers and at least two prepaid burners, perhaps the outgoing premier simply called the wrong one?)

Then on Friday, the Directeur des poursuites criminelles and pénales, suddenly announced that “in light of new elements” it would no longer contest Ouellette’s effort to have warrants UPAC used to seize his phones and computer quashed. Ouellette could go before a judge and recuperate these items, which have been under seal, as soon as Wednesday.

Since UPAC will never be able to examine them, it suggests the probe of Ouellette is done — without ever having shed light on a bizarre and murky caper.

As has been the case throughout, the latest events raise more questions than they answer.

What were the “new elements” that informed the DCPC’s decision days before the election and a week prior to Ouellette’s court date seeking to overturn the warrant? What are Quebecers to take from the timing of Lafrenière’s decision to quit? Was he hoping to raise a white flag while the public and media were distracted by the election? Or was he trying to upstage politicians he has been battling?

When UPAC swooped in to arrest former Liberal deputy premier Nathalie Normandeau on budget day 2016, it might have been an odd coincidence. That explanation rings hollower the second time around.

But if Lafrenière was trying to send a message that he won’t be pushed around — to whom is it addressed? The departing Liberals, who had put Ouellette in charge of holding UPAC to more rigorous standards as head of the institutions committee before his arrest? Or the incoming CAQ, which was lukewarm to Lafrenière’s renewed tenure at UPAC, which was supposed to last until 2021?

Where does this leave UPAC? In an interview last December, Lafrenière touted his squad’s record and downplayed the controversies dogging it as par for the course given its mandate to root out corruption by powerful office-holders. But ongoing internal strife, departures, a top official being shown the door for a conflict of interest, a lawsuit, the bad blood created by the Ouellette affair, the political debate over its future, continuing leaks, the acquittal of former Montreal executive committee chair Frank Zampino et al in the high-profile Contrecoeur case — and now the resignation of its leader — have all left the once venerable and fearsome UPAC in disarray.

Is it too hobbled and dysfunctional to continue? What does this mean for major files like Opération Mâchurer, which is probing possible illegal political financing under Charest and Bibeau? What about Joug and Lierre, where Normandeau and former Liberal cabinet minister Marc-Yvan Côté stand charged with fraud? (Their trial is on hold while Radio-Canada journalist Marie-Maude Denis appeals to the Supreme Court of Canada to protect her sources from demands by Côté’s lawyer to reveal them). What about other files?

It leaves a shambolic mess for the new CAQ government to clean up, and a new pile of troubling questions that should not be swept under the rug.